1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a probe card which measures electrical characteristics of a semiconductor device such as an LSI chip and it relates to a mounting structure of a contactor which comes in contact with the semiconductor device.
2. Description of the Background Art
There are a lateral type called cantilever type and a vertical type called perpendicular type in a probe card which measures electrical characteristics of a semiconductor device such as an LSI chip. The lateral type probe card has an aspect which is not suitable for measuring many chips at the same time, which is required under the circumstances in which large-scale integration of the LSI chip is implemented and a tester is multiplexed, hence its use is decreasing. Meanwhile, since the vertical type probe card can use many probes and provides a high degree of freedom for a probe arrangement and it is suitable for measuring many chips at the same time, it is mainly used at present.
As shown in FIG. 8, a vertical type probe card A comprises a main substrate 1 having a first connection electrode 4 which comes into contact with a measuring device for testing such as a tester (not shown), a sub-substrate 3 having a plurality of through holes 9 which are electrically connected to the first connection electrode, a connection pin 7 which is detachably inserted in the through hole 9, a space transformer 2 provided with a plurality of contactors 6, in which the connection pin 7 protrudes from one main surface 2a and a plurality of contactors 6 provided in the other main surface 2b comes into contact with a semiconductor device (not shown) which is an object to be measured such as an IC chip, and a holding 10 for detachably mounting the space transformer 2 on the main substrate 1.
When the semiconductor device such as the LSI chip is tested, it is required that a plurality of chips are measured at the same time. Recently, there is a demand for a probe card having high stability in electrical contact, a high performance and high reliability even when the number of electrodes of the probe card used in the test is further increased. In addition, since an operation current is very small and contacts are repeated many times in the above probe card, stability of contact pressure of its contactor or stability and preservation of its electrical conductive characteristics are especially required. In addition, responses are also required for deformation or damage which could be generated because of an impact or vibration of the contacts.
The semiconductor device is measured in such a manner that the contactor 6 of the probe card is pressed against an object to be tested such as an IC chip (not shown), and a measuring device for testing such as a tester (not shown) is brought into contact with the first connection electrode 4 of the main contactor mounting substrate 1. However, as shown in FIG. 8, according to the conventional probe card, since the contactor 6 is fixed by soldering directly to the contactor mounting substrate (space transformer 2), when deformation or a damage of the contactor 6 because of repetitive contacts is generated, it is necessary to exchange the contactor mounting substrate (space transformer 2) itself, which is very ineffective in terms of time and economical efficiency.
FIG. 9 also shows a conventional example, in which a contactor mounting substrate (space transformer 2) is separated. Although there is an improvement as compared with an example shown in FIG. 8, the economical efficiency is still ineffective.